


It Came from the Drive-In

by Dragonie



Series: Better Days Coming [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Halloween, Horror Movie Right There on My TV, I Will Be Happy if Anyone Gets That Reference, Scary Movies, Wasteland Halloween 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 20:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12565152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonie/pseuds/Dragonie
Summary: It's Halloween, and apocalypse or no, what kind of Halloween would it be without the cheesy horror movies?Preston and Mari take advantage of discovering possibly the wasteland's last working drive-in for a cozy night of low-budget spooks.





	It Came from the Drive-In

“Ready?” Mari grinned, seating herself on the hood of a rusted-out Highwayman and laying out the snacks: a battered old canister of potato crisps; a box of ancient cotton candy bites from Nuka-World; a foil pouch of freshly-cooked campfire popcorn, garnished liberally with Brahmin butter and Far Harbor sea salt.

“Ready.” Preston lugged the cracked cooler to the car and set it down before the bumper, flipping open the lid to reveal a bounty of Nuka and Gwinnett. He clambered up onto the car beside Marisol, giving her a kiss on the cheek as he settled into place. She laughed and nuzzled his face as his arm snuck around her waist, drawing her close. Her body was warm against the chill night air, even beneath her thick coat.

“Let’s do this shit.” Mari’s eyes gleamed as she slammed a button on the remote next to her. Electrical signals travelled to rigging she’d installed in the booth far above, flipping the circuit breaker and sending the projector whirring into life - and just like that, Eden Meadows Cinemas played to its first (non-Feral) audience in over two centuries.

No more Ferals left in the place, thank God. Couldn’t be many left on the Island, for that matter, unless they’d learned how to swim from the mainland; now  _ that _ was a frightening thought. The Fog was lighter tonight, thanks in no small part to a handful of condensers whirring away at the edges of the cracked concrete, their thin blue light an odd mixture of reassuring and eerie. The Minutemen had been flat out helping the Harbormen set up Acadia’s gifts around the isle, a sign of a renewed peace between the two populations. Those kooks in the old submarine had grumbled a bit at this, and the General had been forced to mark out a few territories of Fog preservation around their sacred sites.

Dramatic music burst forth from a crackly old speaker still hooked into an empty windowframe as the words “Night of the Fish Men’s Revenge!” filled the peeling screen in bold letters. He’s be lying if he said he wasn’t curious. Precious little of this form of Old World entertainment had survived, and what there was was usually played on sheets to crowds by carnival-men for a handful of caps; nothing like the everyday amusement Mari made it out to be. The General had told him all about drive-in theatres and movie stars and this place called “Holy Wood.” Whole thing was strange to him, another part of her old life that was completely alien and, as always, he found himself wanting to know more.

Besides, the movie looked like it might be kinda fun. And when he looked down at Mari, her head nestled in the crook of his shoulder, and saw her eyes shining with delight - well, he didn’t care if it turned out to be the most boring movie in the world.

The screen rolled through the credits, a list of names that Mari might know but meant nothing to him, eventually replaced by a proud voiceover accompanying a slow pan over some distant jungle. A gaggle of scientists became very excited over an unusual skeleton, completely failing to notice a webbed hand rising out of the waters behind them. Mari nudged him eagerly at the first glimpse of the “Fish Man”, and grabbed a handful of popcorn. Preston frowned at the screen, something about the limb feeling oddly familiar, but he was distracted by Mari offering him the pouch. He had to admit, the stuff was pretty tasty.

Mari watched intently as the monster’s wet footsteps shuffled towards the scientists’ tent as they slept. When the beast’s arm grabbed its first scientist (with some rather awkward choreography), he even felt her tense up against him, and a mischievous thought bubbled up in his head. Under the guise of an innocent stretch, he shifted into position, and then, just as the webbed talons reached towards the unsuspecting heroine, he grabbed the unsuspecting General in the side, gloved fingers spread apart like claws, making a playful growl that broke down quickly into full-throated laughter. Mari gave a surprised squawk and nearly jumped out of her skin, popcorn spilling everywhere as she twisted away and landed on her back on the car hood, dangerously close to rolling off. She looked at him in mock indignation as he helped her back up.

“Pretty sure doing that to a superior officer is a court-martialing offence,” she grumbled. “Just saying.”

“Sorry, General,” Preston laughed and gave her a little salute, which she accepted with a gracious nod of the head. “Couldn’t help myself.” He gathered her back up into his arms, with a kiss on the forehead by way of apology. She settled back down, back against his chest, head resting on his shoulder, brushing bits of popcorn from her Minutemen coat.

“Never realised you had such a mean streak in you, Garvey,” she laughed.

“Well, I never thought you’d scare so easily, General.” He grinned.

“Oh, shush. Getting into the spooks is part of the fun.”

And, he noted, she did just that, watching with wide and dazzled eyes, gasping almost theatrically at the reveal of the monster (which looked, he noted, incredibly like a Mirelurk King, although Mari had said those weren’t around before the War. Hell of a coincidence, that…), nearly spilling her beer when a clammy hand reached through the porthole to swipe at the crew. He wouldn’t have thought a fishman could hold many scares after facing a Mirelurk Queen in battle, but between her enthusiasm and the undeniable campy charm, he found himself getting into the film as well, clinging to Mari tight as the creature absconded with the heroine into the depths. By the time the beast’s body sank into the depths of its primordial lake, he found himself disappointed that it was over so soon.

“So you’d do this every year?” Preston asked Mari as a second list of credits finished playing and the projector fizzled for few moments before starting up from the beginning. Mari nodded, and switched off the remote, bathing the drive-in in darkness broken only by the cool glow of Fog condensers and the half-moon above them.

“More or less,” she answered. “Before Nate enlisted, at any rate.” Her face took on that strange mixture of nostalgia and regret she often wore when discussing the pre-War world. Much as she had often told him of its horrors, he supposed, it was, in a sense, her home. “Lots of different movies, of course. One Halloween back in high school, a bunch of us tried sneaking into the back rows of a slasher flick marathon.” She smiled, a faraway look in her eyes. “Of course, we weren’t nearly as stealthy as we thought we were, and we got caught by this human brick of an usher. Rita was acting so tough at the start, but she nearly burst out crying then and there when he threatened to call our parents.” She snuggled in closer to him, drawing on his warmth in the cool fall night.

“You think we could get something like that going at Sanctuary?” She’d done so much for the Minutemen, for  _ him _ … if this small thing he could think of could give her some of that happiness back, well, he’d do it in a heartbeat. Besides, it might help lift the spirits of the others, too. “Might not be able to get a movie like this, but… hell, I don’t know, Sturges has got some real good ghost stories?”

“You know,” Mari said, nestling her head against his shoulder and pressing her lips against his neck, making him shiver for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold, “that sounds like one hell of an idea.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for both a Halloween challenge on tumblr and a Halloween prompt on Discord server with the theme of 'horror movies'!
> 
> Some of the most enjoyable research I've had for a fic: watching "Creature from the Black Lagoon" because it was the obvious inspiration for that fishman movie in Eden Meadows, haha


End file.
